Robert Kolker

Robert Phillip Kolker

In this 20th anniversary edition, Kolker continues and expands his inquiry into the phenomenon of cinematic representation of culture by updating and revising the chapters on Kubrick, Scorsese, Altman and Spielberg.

Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman

A Cinema of Loneliness

This collection brings together outstanding critical essays on this influential and teachable film. The essays not only illustrate the complexities of Psycho, but represent the spectrum of criticism of the film. The contents include an analysis of its music and various close readings illustrated by many stills from the film.

A Casebook

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

The "New Wave" style of American film of the 1960s and 70s--characterized by exciting, narrative innovation and sometimes adventurous reworkings of older film genres, as well as images of solitude and explosive violence--has come to an end. Erasing virtually all traces of 60s and 70s experimentation, American film in the 1980s has returned with a vengeance to a more linear, conventional style. In this newly revised edition of The Cinema of Loneliness, Robert Phillip Kolker continues and expands his inquiry into the phenomenon of cinematic representations of culture by updating the chapters on the directors discussed in the first edition--Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Altman--to include their latest work, and by substituting for the chapter on Francis Ford Coppola a chapter on the cultural, political, and ideological formations of eighties films and the work of Steven Spielberg. He incorporates new discussions to include the more recent films, such as Arthur Penn's Four Friends (1983) and Target (1985); Stanley Kubrick's direction of The Shining (1980) and Full Metal Jacket (1987); Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), After Hours (1985), and The Color of Money (1986); and Robert Altman's A Perfect Couple (1979), Popeye (1980), Streamers (1983), A Fool for Love (1985), and Beyond Therapy (1987). Placing the films of Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Altman in an ideological perspective, Kolker both illuminates their relationship to one another and to larger currents in our culture, and emphasizes the statements their films make about American society.

Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman

Bernardo Bertolucci

Peter Beicken

The authors trace the development of one of the most well-known directors of the New German Cinema that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. Examining Wim Wenders' career from his early film school productions through his mature works of the 1970s, this book also analyses the most recent works, as well as the themes and preoccupations that unite his oeuvre. As the authors note, Wenders' works have been profoundly influenced by American films, especially the 'road movie' genre. His own work often features characters who are always on the move, in an attempt to capture a glimpse of their identity and place in the world. They also represent a generation of postwar Germans seeking to redeem themselves and the history of their country by turning to American popular culture, particularly its music and movies.

Cinema as Vision and Desire

The Films of Wim Wenders

The Altering Eye covers a "golden age" of international cinema from the end of WWII through to the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Combining historical, political, and textual analysis, the author develops a pattern of cinematic invention and experimentation from neorealism through the modernist interventions of Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Maria Fassbinder, focusing along the way on such major figures as Luis Bunuel, Joseph Losey, the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, and the work of major Cuban filmmakers. Kolker's book has become a much quoted classic in the field of film studies providing essential reading for anybody interested in understanding the history of European and international cinema. This new and revised edition includes a substantive new Preface by the author and an updated Bibliography."

Robert Phillip Kolker

Books

Your next favorite book is out there